Dhaka . . . when we knew it as Dacca

There are all those times when I go looking for Dacca as I knew it ages ago. It was a time when Dhaka was spelt as Dacca and yet we pronounced the word in the Bengali way. I will confess that when in the mid-1980s, during the period of the Ershad military regime, Dacca became Dhaka, I was a trifle sad. The reason was obvious: when you grow up with tradition, be it cultural or political or social, something of habit develops in you. You have grown into adulthood saying, in good Bengali, 'dhonnobad' to people who do you a favour or give you a gift, and so it is often jarring to hear your neighbour, a Bengali as you are, slipping into English with his 'thank you.'

So when I think back on Dacca, on memories of it, it is the old dreams and the old realities which come rushing back to the mind. My aunt, my mother's beautiful younger sister, passed away recently. In her youth she often had me (and I was in kindergarten) accompany her on her evening walks in a small wooded place, a natural park you might say, in Malibagh. Birdsong defined the beauty of the place and the breeze flowing through the trees is what I remember every time I go back in a futile search for the place. Those woods are not there, for in their place (and it is opposite Mouchak Market) have risen monstrosities of buildings that have nothing of the aesthetic about them. My aunt is gone and so are those trees and birds and breeze.

It has always occurred to me that all the beautiful images of life, our collective life, came encapsulated in serene black and white in the old days. Go back to the old black-and-white photographs our parents carefully preserved in albums; and compare them with the ubiquity of the images we capture on our mobile phones today in their myriad manifestations of colours. It is the black-and-white pictures we go back to. Images of our mothers, aunts and older sisters and cousins, with their long tresses, with their hair tied into buns, are the legacy we have lost. It is that legacy I go looking for even as I pass into the winter of my life. My search does not end, even if the old glory has gone missing. It is a fruitless search.

In the old days, it was sheer joy making our way to the old Tejgaon airport --- and I refer to the 1960s and early 1970s --- simply to watch aircraft landing and taking off. We could go up to the balcony upstairs, stand against the railing beneath the control tower and be witness to scenes of happiness as also tears of sadness. A young woman, obviously newly married, weeps copious tears as she hugs her family before boarding a flight out of the country. The plane door closes, and the woman's family wait near the aircraft until it begins moving and eventually taking off. All these years I have wondered where that young woman is today, what family she has given rise to. Is she yet the beauty she was on that day of tears?

In Wari, especially Rankin Street, I have a hard time locating the old house where our family spent a decade between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. Unknowingly I stand before it, look around at the superstructures that have come up to house super shops and other business establishments. It is a street I do not recognise anymore. I ask a passer-by about my house. I give him the number. He smiles a friendly smile and asks me to turn around. I do. He says, 'You are standing before it.' My shock is complete. This is not the house I knew. The home we lived in has become buried under the ugly weight of modernity. I make a move to rediscover the other streets of my youth. The results are the same. I look for a friend's house, cannot find it, and come away in a morose state of mind.

There are the old bookshops which once whetted our appetite for reading. They were all there in the stadium market and at New Market. We grew up collecting books from these shops and tried to picture the world beyond our little universe here in Dhaka/Dacca. Those bookshops have receded into the past. Good old Zeenat Books passed into history some months ago. On the pavements along Bangabandhu Avenue, hawkers sold rich magazines and serious journals for a pittance. Crowds of bibliophiles were a regular sight around these spots. In a street off the main road in Bijoynagar, a bookseller dealt in such rich works as literature, biography and history. All this happiness has passed from our lives.

Remember Paltan Maidan? It was a place where much of Bengali nationalist history was forged, with political leaders teaching us of patriotism and the necessity of democratic politics. It was at Paltan Maidan that we heard Bangabandhu in the early 1970s. It was here that we listened to Moulana Bhashani inspire us with his principled politics. It was here that we heard the young student leaders in early March 1971 and knew that the path to national liberation was being paved.

That was Paltan Maidan, an integral component in the history of the country. It is no more there, for it was to fell prey to men's consumerist instincts a long time ago. Dhaka/Dacca has never been the same.

Life was simpler in the Dacca we knew. In the 1970s, with all those Presidents and Prime Ministers flying in from abroad and Bangabandhu welcoming them at Tejgaon airport, we lined the road from the airport to wherever the VIP visitors would be staying to have a glimpse of our illustrious guests and wave at them cheerfully. At Farmgate, under an old tree, many of us waited to welcome the visitors. That tree was cut down a long time ago, to 'modernise' the area. When I am in Farmgate these days, it is the old images --- of Anwar Sadat, Josip Broz Tito, Sardar Mohammad Daoud and others in the motorcades speeding by--- which well up in the memory.

Along Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue timber shops dotted the area. They have gone and so have their owners. You now have a series of corporate structures in their place. You are a stranger today in what used to be a place you could feel was yours and that of your fellow citizens. When it rained --- and as a student from a family hard up in finances you had no money to take a rickshaw home --- you sheltered beside a small shop for the downpour to subside before you could resume your walk home. If the rain continued, you indulged in the brave act of walking home in the rain, drenched and with the likelihood of catching a cold and fever.

In the old days, Dhaka/Dacca had homes, with courtyards fronting the living quarters. In those courtyards, families demarcated areas that would be patches for the growth of vegetables and such accessories as green chili. Around the homes were fruit trees bearing mangoes, kotbels and bananas. Small gardens intensified the beauty of the homes. Those homes, unlike today's apartment condominiums, were inhabited by families linked to other families, their neighbours, in similar fashion. Housewives, when they cooked meat or fish, would make it a point to send a bowl of the food to their neighbours. Warmth defined relations between adults, with their children developing friendship that would last a lifetime.

Our mothers and their friends in the neighbourhood were avid readers in the Dhaka/Dacca we have lost to the ravages of time. Hawkers carrying books and periodicals on baskets (tukris) they held on their heads would make weekly visits to various localities, selling or lending their wares to the waiting women of the neighbourhood. I have seen my mother and aunt regularly borrowing Begum, the influential magazine, from the hawker and reading it over a week and then waiting for him to turn up again.

Those were good times, almost ethereal in their essence. It was a green city, with trees and other forms of nature dotting its entirety. Where you have apartments and business establishments today, there were unending spaces accommodating all the reality of undefiled nature. Water bodies were a ubiquity, enhancing the appeal of the city that was at the time a placid town. Children caught fish there with their bare hands; and when it rained in the monsoon, their happiness knew no bounds.

Ah, there was the radio. There was the transistor, the knob of which we turned to come by news of happenings around the globe. Tuning in to Bangladesh Betar, we waited for onurodher ashor, for the latest movie songs the radio station had on offer. We sang those songs. It is melody we have remembered and hum even now as we step into our twilight. With Bangladesh Television --- there was no other channel, thankfully --- families gathered around the television set, waiting for the weekly drama, shoptaher natok, before settling down to dinner. And then there were the weekly movies we relished watching.

Excitement was part of life. Why else would we all troop down to the stadium to watch football matches between such teams as Abahani and Mohammedan? All of Dhaka/Dacca was involved in the game. Fans of the winning team went back home in the manner of soldiers who had just vanquished their enemies on the battlefield. The vanquished glared in anger, vowing to turn the tables the next time round.

This was Dacca. Or Dhaka. It was more than a city or town. It was a community close-knit, where fellow feeling and camaraderie was all. Men wore white shirts and white pyjamas, which enhanced their Bengali roots. And women were in sarees, in a multiplicity of colours, which simply added to their beauty and grace and elegance.

There was a ring of poetry about and around Dacca. There was nothing prosaic about it. It is Dacca we miss in Dhaka.

[email protected]